Joanne Collins
Agricultural Panel · Sinn Féin · Ireland
“I am going to speak to amendments Nos. 2, 4 and 8. Amendment No. 2 makes it absolutely clear that the strategic emergency gas reserve is exactly that: an emergency reserve. It cannot become another source of gas for day-to-day commercial supply or market management.”
“(3) The Minister must mandate that the CRU carries out an assessment on the impact of the expenses incurred on household bills under this Act and all future Acts relating to construction, operation, maintenance and decommissioning of a Strategic Emergency Gas Reserve.”. I will keep this very brief.”
“I move amendment No. 6: In page 10, between lines 31 and 32, to insert the following: " State-led 5 . (1) The Strategic Emergency Gas Reserve constructed, operated and maintained under this Act and all future Acts relating to its construction, operation, maintenance and decommissioning will be a State-led asset.”
“Yes, I am not going to give out. Regardless of what is said to me I am going to be nice today on our last day. I echo what is being said about everybody enjoying their break and the thanks to all the staff in here. It can be very daunting when you first come in but everybody makes you feel like you can do it. It is great to work here.”
“I move amendment No. 7: In page 10, between lines 31 and 32, to insert the following: " Gas demand 5 . (1) The Minister shall ensure that a Strategic Emergency Gas Reserve established under this Act and all future Acts relating to its construction, operation, maintenance and decommissioning does not lead to an increase in gas demand.”
“I move amendment No. 10: In page 10, between lines 31 and 32, to insert the following: “Decommissioning 5. The Minister shall, within 12 months of the commencement of this Act, outline a plan for decommissioning any Strategic Emergency Gas Reserve constructed, operated, maintained or decommissioned under this Act and all future Acts relat…”
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“I move amendment No. 3: In page 13, between lines 23 and 24, to insert the following: “(4) The Minister shall cause a copy of any order made under subsection (1) to be laid before each House of the Oireachtas as soon as may be after it is made, and the order shall lapse 6 months after the date it is made unless earlier revoked or expressly continued by a resolution of both Houses.”. I am going to be quick and give a synopsis of each amendment as they have been grouped. They are about oversight. Clear language is what we need and public participation is all we are trying to get through with these amendments. There is nothing too technical about them. Amendment No. 3 introduces the requirement that ministerial orders be laid before the Houses and lapse after six months if not renewed.”
“Lidl had a proposal in for planning permission in Abbeyfeale. It has been rejected because it does not suit the town plan. Maybe town plans need to be readjusted to suit the needs of the people within the town. It might just be a Lidl store, but not having that Lidl store is forcing the people of Abbeyfeale to leave the town to do their food shop somewhere else because they have a lack of choice. It would also increase employment in the area.”
“We need to start seeing them as actual opportunities for job creation and not just let them continue to decline. I have been in contact not just with the workers in Kostal but with SIPTU. It is still waiting for any engagement from the Minister for enterprise on this. SIPTU wants to know if he is going to engage with it. I would like to see him hold a meeting with the workers in Kostal. A lot of these workers would have gone straight from secondary school to work there, which would have been the 40 years ago. They will not have the skills that are required to redo curricula vitae, CVs, and conduct job interviews. They are going to need a lot of support. I would like some supports put in place. I have also sent an email to the Minister to see if I can get an update on what is happening. We need to look at investment in rural Ireland.”
“I second Senator Andrews's amendment to the Order of Business regarding his Bill. I am going to bring up an issue I have brought up in this House previously on the Order of Business and through Commencement matters about the loss of jobs in Abbeyfeale at the Kostal plant. We are looking at 140 job losses. My issue is the lack of investment in our rural towns and villages. We are constantly seeing Ministers and councillors who all delight in taking pictures when a job is created, but we do not seem to see them very often when the jobs are being dropped. We have Kostal in Abbeyfeale, County Limerick. Wyeth in Askeaton will be closing its doors next month resulting in the loss of a whole load of jobs. We need investment in our rural areas.”
“I do not know why but I do. Organising events is what I enjoy. There is one organisation that I would have to put above a lot of organisations that I know, and that would be ALONE. It does amazing work. I went through Garda vetting to become a volunteer with ALONE. It turned out I could not fulfil that because my mother's dementia was so progressive that I said I would use my ALONE hours to spend time at home with family and look after her, but it is an amazing organisation. It does such good, especially in rural areas where you have a lot of houses that would not have a next-door neighbour or someone coming to the house every day or once a week just to spend an hour with people. The social side of it is what is so important. I will leave it there and pass over to my colleague.”
“It is about community and solidarity because at the end of the day, volunteering truly is the backbone of Ireland, of our towns and villages, of our sporting organisations, of our charities, and of the State itself. If we support that backbone properly, we strengthen Ireland as a whole. I myself volunteer on the board of a community crèche and for the local GAA club. It is funny because my children have not attended crèche in many years and none of them is in any way interested in the GAA. They asked me, not all that long ago, why I was on a crèche committee and a GAA committee when my children had nothing to do with them, and the only answer I could give was that those committees needed somebody and I had that extra bit of time that I could put in and give them a hand, even if it was only fundraising. I get great fun out of fundraising.”
“We need to engage with young people in a way that makes volunteering accessible and worthwhile. Above all, we need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy. Too many volunteers feel like they are filling out forms instead of coaching teams or organising events. Too many small organisations feel like they are jumping through hoops just to stay compliant. That is not sustainable if we want to continue having volunteer groups. If we want volunteering to thrive, we need to make it easier, not harder, for people to step forward. The strategy from 2021 to 2025 was an important step and now we need to build on it with sustained funding and genuine engagement from volunteers themselves. This is an issue where we can come together across both Chambers. Supporting volunteers is not party political.”
“Whether it is the governance rules, safeguarding requirements, insurance costs or compliance obligations, we need to ask whether they make it easier or harder for the person who is giving up their time freely because too often, even with good intentions, we can create systems that add pressure to the people whom we rely on. In rural Ireland especially, volunteering is not optional; it is the backbone of community life. Without it, clubs close, events disappear and social isolation grows. We welcome the strategies that support volunteering but as we move beyond 2025, it needs to be more ambitious. We need properly resourced support for volunteer centres. We need simpler, more practical processes for small community groups that do not have paid staff, only local people doing their best.”
“If we are honest, many of our small towns and rural communities would struggle badly without these people. Most of them are not looking for praise. They do not even want to be called volunteers or see themselves as volunteers. They are just helping; that is it. That is why having a national strategy to recognise volunteering is so important. It mattered to say clearly that what they do and the work they do counts and it underpins our society. However, recognition is only the beginning. If we truly want volunteering to thrive into the future, volunteers themselves must be at the centre of all decisions that are made.”
“I also do not have any inspirational quotes to share but you never know – I might say something inspirational enough that I might be quoted in 50 years, although I doubt it. When we talk of volunteering we are talking about real people who give up their evenings, weekends and time after work not because they have to but because they want to and they have a passion. I see it every week in Limerick. Our Tidy Towns volunteers are out on a Saturday morning planting flowers and cleaning up towns. I see the GAA coaches standing in the rain with young lads and girls helping them not only with skills but also giving them confidence and a sense of belonging. I see it in community halls, parish groups, heritage committees, meals on wheels drivers and community transport volunteers. All these make rural Ireland what it is.”
“Some farmers in the North in the South would have already sold cattle and they are stuck with that stock. They cannot get rid of it because we have that jurisdiction issue. It would be nice to hear some comments from the Minister on the North-South issue and see if we could do this on an all-island basis.”
“If bluetongue is mishandled it risks becoming another blow to confidence in the sector which we just cannot afford in this country. We have such a high standard and such an amazing food sector that we want to get this right. That is what it comes down to. I think everybody in this room wants to get this right and as I said at the start, no blame is being laid at anyone's feet for this. This is not something we could stop coming in but it is definitely something on which we can put our heads together and come up with the right solutions that work for everybody; for ourselves, the Government, the farmers and the consumer. We need to ensure that the consumer understands it is not a health issue. For the farmers it is going to come down to a cost issue more than anything when they see the costs going up and are not able to do their trade.”
“If we are going to be looking at vaccinations the State will have to come up with some kind of a scheme to share the financial burden. Our farmers cannot take much more of a financial cost on top of what they already put up with. As was mentioned earlier, information is critical. Our farmers need a clear roadmap as to how they are going to manage this. They need information on spotting the symptoms, the biosecurity measures, animal movement, and again, the vaccination timelines. It would be nice to see a resourced information campaign that could be put out there for these farmers. We cannot ignore the wider context that Ireland's agrifood reputation is under pressure. We have had the controversies about Bord Bia, trade uncertainty and rising costs.”
“It is virtually up in the air and when it comes to this kind of disease, it would not matter if there was a strong Border, we could still not stop it. We are also calling for a scaling up of testing nationwide, particularly ahead of the warmer months when temperatures go above 12°C, so waiting until the middle of summer is not an option. We need to get this done as quickly as possible. I would also like to see a clear and proactive vaccination strategy. We do not yet know if this is going to be mandatory or widespread or how many have to do it. When we talk about vaccinations we will have to take into account the significant cost to the farmer. From what I can gather it is €2.50 a head for sheep and €9 a head for cattle. Depending on herd size that is going to be a significant cost.”
“It is nice to have the Minister back in the House again. Not for one minute is this anybody's fault. Nobody can predict a midge coming over the Border and infecting our animals but it is an all-island issue. I echo what I have heard across the floor. It is an all-island issue, and it needs to be tackled on an all-island basis. Not having exports North and South is just not sustainable when there are farmers on each side of the Border with the exact same disease. I completely understand the Minister's point that importing jurisdictions decide on derogations, but the Government has the responsibility to drive an all-island solution on this and to raise it urgently at an EU level so that animal health certification reflects the reality on the ground, which is we do not have a strong Border on this island.”
“Shannon Foynes Port is a fantastic facility for offshore. It is the deepest port in Europe, and it has unbelievable facilities. I have been there. I have seen its plans a couple of times. We could definitely look into getting the designated maritime area plans, DMAPs, a little bit more quickly so that we could move from the south east around to the west coast and look at maybe getting it offshore and stop congesting our rural communities with wind turbines.”
“I thank the Minister for his response. It is great to see that he is not just reading off a script and that he is engaging with this. It is fantastic to see that there are projects going ahead that are going to increase our capacity for holding this energy. As I said, however, it is putting the cart before the horse. Is there any way the Minister would put a pause on these proposals to put more wind energy in until the grid is at a stage where it can hold that energy and where curtailment costs are not going to be added to people's bills? The second issue is the position or places where they are put. In Limerick county, 70% of the land mass is preferred for wind energy. That is madness. We could be covered in wind turbines when, at the same time, we are trying to look at the offshore energy.”
“The renewable electricity support scheme, RESS, 3 came in and relieved any of these countries from having the cost of curtailment put back on them. I have been told that the Minister could address that. I am not an expert in wind energy. When the wind turbine is turned off, the company is still being paid for wind energy regardless of whether it is producing any. If the Minister could give me a couple of answers, that would be great.”
“They get paid their curtailment cost. For years, we have been promised that wind energy will lower our energy costs, but it is not doing that and we are paying a large amount. In 2024, there was a bill of £1 billion for curtailment in Scotland. If we keep going the way we are going by putting in more wind energy and turbines even when our grid cannot hold it and we have to keep curtailing, we could see ourselves hitting €1 billion by 2030. I have spoken about this to experts who have worked on wind energy. They are engineers who have designed wind turbines and worked in the United States on wind energy. They are all for wind energy but not the way it is being done here and not in a way where we cannot hold this energy, whereby we end up having to curtail and put a cost back on everyone.”
“When it comes to curtailment, we have a strategy in this country to achieve 9 GW of wind energy generated onshore. I think we are at 4.5 GW or 5 GW at the moment. I do not know; I am only guessing. We curtail a certain amount of energy because our grid cannot hold it. I know the Minister will reply with all of the different reasons our grid cannot, the constraints and everything else. We know the grid is not up to standard. I want to see the grid getting up to standard - we all do - but it is like putting the cart before the horse, with us putting all of these wind turbines and wind farms in before the grid can actually take that wind energy. The Minister knows what I will say, in that the cost of energy curtailment is put back on the consumer. The wind farm developers get paid regardless of whether that turbine is turning.”
“I assume that was to suit a developer that wanted to put a wind farm there. It was not being proposed as a preferred area for wind energy. The argument is that, if the council can change it from orange to green, why can it not change it from green to orange or green to red, considering the number of objections that are submitted against each of the proposed wind farms. The wind farms that are being proposed are themselves in breach of the 2006 regulations, where the turbines have to be seven turbine lengths apart from one another. I am not even talking about their distance from houses and schools. They are not, though. From what we can gather, they are 3.5 turbines lengths apart. When you have them that close together and there is a downwind, they become noisier. That is the reason they should be seven turbines apart from one another.”
“I welcome the Minister to the House. I am delighted to see him here and hope he is as concerned about wind energy in this country as I am when I look at some of the statistics that I have and some of the issues in County Limerick in particular. There are at least three wind farms being proposed for County Limerick and in that context there are two issues I want to raise, relating to curtailment costs and wind energy maps. In 2013, a circular was sent to the county councils that said not to amend or adjust their wind energy maps until new guidelines were released. The Minister knows as well as I do that we are still waiting for those new guidelines. Limerick City and County Council amended one of its maps for an area in County Limerick called Creeves. The local authority changed it from orange to green.”
“Consider what would happen if I entered a new tenancy agreement after 1 March for a house that had been built 60 years ago, which had dampness and was not A or B rated. If Senator Tully rented a house that was brand new and we both paid the same rent, I would go to the RTB about it. I do not see why I should have to live in something that may potentially have mould or dampness and pay the exact same rent as somebody down the road just because we both took out leases after 1 March. The RTB will be filled with complaints. Let us pre-empt that. We have developed flood defences systems in this country to pre-empt a flood. There could be the could be a flood of cases to the RTB. It is a very simple amendment which the Minister could accept to show that he might be in favour of helping these renters in one way or another.”
“I will be brief. The amendment is sensible and would provide more staff to the RTB for when this potential disaster hits. When many immigrants came into the country, the International Protection Office was understaffed and could not keep up with the number of applications. We saw what that did. People were giving out and protesting on the streets. There is no protection for renters in the Bill. As I said yesterday, the entire Bill needs to be dumped. I ask the Minister to at least accept the amendment and have staff in place to help residents when they need to go to the RTB and ensure they will not wait for months or years for a case to be examined. At least put that small amount of protection into the Bill.”
“Who wants to buy a house next to a wind turbine? I ask for a debate in the House. There are a lot of holes in this and a lot of issues we need to tease out.”
“Curtailing is dumping, more or less. We dump 1.4 million kW of energy in this country every day because we cannot store it. We are putting up wind turbines left, right and centre and we have nowhere to store the energy. All of that comes at a cost to taxpayers. Taxpayers are paying to dump energy when we have energy poverty all over the country and we are causing stress and strain for communities that have to put up with proposals to build these wind turbines not far from people's houses. The health risks and annoyance wind turbines cause, and even just the look of them, mean people do not want them stuck next to their houses. It will drive down the cost of their houses. Householders will be in negative equity, if they are ever able to sell their house. They probably will not be able to sell them.”
“They will be obsolete when they come out because they are ten years old. The wind turbines being installed are not going to be taken down because the new guidelines state that, for the last ten years, the wrong turbines have been erected and they should all be taken down and replaced with smaller ones. A position paper on wind turbines and public health was done in 2017 but was withdrawn in 2025. The paper claimed that health impacts of wind turbines, such as annoyance, sleep disturbance and headaches, were not supported by evidence. I can only assume that if the paper was withdrawn in 2025, that is no longer the case and it is now believed that wind turbines contribute to these issues. I ask for a debate in the House. I will also table a Commencement matter on the issue because curtailment is also an issue.”
“I raise an issue I have raised a number of times in the House, namely, wind energy, particularly for County Limerick. A 2013 Government circular asked local authorities to refrain from updating their wind energy strategies or maps. In the 13 years since, Limerick City and County Council has updated its map to change an area from orange to green. It will not, by any means, change from green to red or green to orange. It will change the map to suit itself. For 13 years, councils have been told not to change the map. One of the issues is that it is being changed to suit an area or to suit a developer that might want to put a wind farm somewhere where previously it would not have been preferred but now all of a sudden is. Another issue is that we were told we would have the guidelines in 2024. It is now 2026. The guidelines were done in 2016.”
“People cannot live any more. It is absolutely heartbreaking to see that the next generation is going to come up and will not know what it was like to be able to go out for a drink, to not struggle to pay for their car tax or to be able to put diesel in the car and not worry. They are putting in €10 worth of diesel one day and waiting until the following day to put in another €10. They are seeing how they go by the end of the week. Fifteen years ago, we were able to live a little bit. This is not living. People are not living right now. They are struggling to survive every single day. The Bill, in allowing the upping of rent, is absolutely farcical. How can the Government say rents will go up so supply will come up so we can bring down the rent again? It is completely ridiculous.”
“Deputy Ó Broin has brought forward many brilliant ideas and I do not know whether it is stubbornness or pettiness that the Government parties do not want to look at them. He has consulted experts – not Sinn Féin experts, but independent experts - who back up some of the policies he has suggested, but the Government just does not want to look at them. It is just going to keep making the same mistakes over and over. The Minister of State asked about how we fix the housing crisis. There is one simple answer - we need to get rid of the parties that caused it. I do not mean for that to sound as bitchy as it does, but we need to get rid of the ones that caused the housing crisis. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have been in government for the past ten and 15 years, respectively. Jesus Christ, if we go back 15 years, people were able to live.”
“That is it, however. We have lost many good people, including many tradespeople. They trained as carpenters, builders, plumbers and electricians but we cannot even get one here if we have a problem in our house because none of them lives in the country anymore. This is what is going to happen if we keep pushing up the cost of rent. We are going to end up losing many more people. If Members think emigration is bad now, just give it a couple of months or years when this market reset keeps going. It will be 100 times worse. It will be all old people living here and no young people. When we are all retiring, there will be no one to take over and we are going to have the pension problem again. It goes around in a circle constantly. The Minister of State said he did not want to accept any of the amendments.”
“I am sorry but there is not a chance. I am going to have to look at building chalets around my house or something because they are never moving out, and they know that. The only way they are ever going to move out is if they emigrate. I do not want that. While I wish for them to be able to live independently, I do not want to lose them. I know that when they emigrate, especially girls, they might meet someone over there and not come home because they end up having their families there. I have a lot of friends living in Australia and Canada who are never coming home. They have children and are married there. They are now residents of those countries and integrated into their societies. They might come home at Christmas to see their parents or if their parents become really sick, God forbid, they might have no choice but to come home.”
“It is crazy to think that they can get away with upping the rent every single year for a new tenancy and not have to pay any penalty for it. I cannot understand it. It is as if the Government is punishing renters for the failure in housing. That is how it comes across. People who are renting are in that situation because they cannot afford to buy a house. Let us go back a few years. I built my first house when I was 20. I could not do that now if I were a 20-year-old. There would be no chance in hell I could do that now. I have two adult children at home. I have four children altogether but two of them are adults. I am never going to see the back of them. Do not get me wrong; I love them but I am going to get sick of living with them at some stage. The day one of them comes home and says they are going to have a child, that is it.”
“They are breaking themselves every day to get to college. A lot of them have to commute. There are three colleges in Limerick city and the students in the county who cannot afford to drive but might be lucky enough to get accommodation in the city are now going to hit with this where they will pay huge, extortionate rents. I am sorry - it is not going to be them paying, but their parents. If they are in college Monday to Friday, they are only getting weekend jobs. They are not earning enough to pay for this rent. It is the parents who pay it, and they are being crippled left, right and centre. This is crazy. It is all for large corporate landlords and developers. This is not for the one-off landlord. Those large companies pay little to no tax.”
“I am looking at houses being built in rural County Limerick in the west and a three-bedroom bungalow, off the plans, is €500,000. It is absolute madness to think about what the cost is going to be. No young person can afford that. I listened to other Senators talk about emigration. Young people are finishing school and college and getting out of here. This Bill is going to hit college students worse than it will hit rural Ireland. It is going to be bad for rural Ireland but it will be 100 times worse for college students because they take out a new lease every nine months. That is a new tenancy every nine months. It is going to be great for the people who own the houses because they will be able to keep increasing their rent every nine months. Where is the fairness for these students?”
“To take a couple, one a teacher and the other a garda, as an example, people would have thought that, since they had such amazing jobs, they were on the pig’s back and would have no problem getting a house, having kids, putting them through college, buying the new car and going on holidays every year. That is not the case any more. These things cannot be done on those wages. People need to be earning over €100,000 to be able to even think about going to a mortgage company. Very few people can go to a mortgage company and get a mortgage. Maybe they could 20 years ago because house prices were on average between €200,000 and €250,000, and people could get one for a little bit cheaper if they were willing to downgrade.”
“Most people in County Limerick cannot afford rent as it is, never mind an extra €400 per month for a new tenancy. It is absolutely crazy. Every week, I receive calls to my office from tenants facing eviction notices who ask what they should do and whether they will have to go to homeless services. Homeless services will get to a point - it is horrible to say it - where they will not be able to take these people. They are going to run out of space because people cannot afford to stay in rented accommodation. Most of these people do not even want to be in rented accommodation; they want to own their own homes. Going back ten, 20 or 30 years, the thing in this country was to get a good job and buy a house, but that is not even a possibility any more.”
“I am always hearing stuff from the Government benches such as “time is more valuable than money” and, in this case, “it is all about supply”. There is no point in supply, however, if people are not able to afford that supply. With this Bill, supply only seems to play in favour of some parts of Dublin. Supply is not going to increase in Limerick, Cork, Kerry, Tipperary or any of the rural areas. Rather, it will hit those rural areas the hardest because they predominately have houses rather than apartments. In County Limerick, a new tenancy will be an extra €400 per month when market rates come in. In the Minister of State’s county of Cork, it will be an extra €300, while in Kerry it will be an extra €250. I am focusing on Munster at the moment.”
“I will direct my questions to Séan Kelly, MEP. Why did he vote against referring the EU Mercosur trade agreement to the European Court of Justice? I know he spoke about that in his opening remarks and a couple of times thereafter. Was there a whip in place for that vote? I ask this in light of the recent block-in of the Hague fisheries safeguards by a group of the larger member states, an outcome which is expected to probably cost Ireland up to €200 million. There are real concerns that the safeguards can be weakened in practice. How can Irish farmers have confidence that the safeguards that are put in place as regards the Mercosur trade agreement will be legally robust and cannot simply be undermined or vetoed?”
“I move amendment No. 2: To insert the following paragraphs under “calls on the Government to:" "- expedite the National Vehicle and Driver File Bill 2025 to ensure that local authorities have expedited access to road collision data; - explore an all-island approach to road safety initiatives; - commit to a clear, time-bound plan to recruit, train and retain additional Garda members specifically for high-visibility road policing, backed by apppropriate resources, vehicles, technology and ongoing professional development;"”
“You are going to go that few miles ahead of the speed limit to get somewhere faster. It is the deterrent that there is a possibility of getting those penalty points or fine. We need to have that deterrent, not just as a punishment but to get people back in line and to show that there is a reason that we have speed limits and why we wear seatbelts. When I was a kid, there was no such thing as seatbelts. You could put five or six into the back seat of the car and go wherever you wanted. Nothing was ever said. We have come such a huge way when it comes to road safety that we just need to make sure that it is enforced where is needs to be enforced.”
“We owe it to the families who have suffered. We owe it to the emergency services who have to respond to these fatalities in the aftermath. It is a good Bill. We have covered it in the transport committee for the last couple of weeks and we will be for the next couple of weeks. It affects everyone, whether one is a vehicle user, a pedestrian or a cyclist. Road safety has to be the bottom line of every single meeting and every agenda that we ever do. We can get it down. We just need to get the right measures in place. We need to get the road policing back up. We do need that deterrent. I know, as well as everybody in this room, if you thought you had the run of the road and you are never going to get caught or there will never be a checkpoint, you are going to pick the phone up if you really need to.”
“That means a clear time-bound plan to restore and expand Garda roads policing numbers with dedicated resources, modern equipment and a focus on deployment in rural areas, not just urban centres. It also means recognising the reality of rural life. For many people, a car is not a choice but a necessity. Public transport alternatives are limited. A lot of the time, they are non-existent. This places an even greater responsibility on the State to ensure rural roads are safe, well maintained and policed. I also stress that this is not about punishment for its own sake. High-visibility policing is one of the most effective deterrents we have. It changes behaviour before the tragedy ever occurs. It reassures communities and supports the vast majority of road users that rightly do the right thing every day.”
“This issue has been raised repeatedly, including by my colleague Deputy Matt Carthy, who has warned that recruitment and retention failures within An Garda Síochána are directly undermining front-line policing capacity, including roads policing. That warning should concern each and every one of us here. The consequences are particularly stark in rural areas. A single Garda unit may be covering a vast geographic area, responding not only to traffic incidents, but to all policing demands in the area. That means fewer checkpoints, less visibility and slower responses when gardaí need to get to the site of a collision. This motion makes many sensible calls. It calls for safer speed limits, better infrastructure and education in our schools. However, all of these must be backed by a renewed commitment to roads policing.”
“They can drive on rural roads for days, weeks and often months without seeing a Garda checkpoint or patrol car. That absence is noticed and, unfortunately, it changes behaviour. That is why enforcement matters. This motion rightly highlights speeding, distraction, intoxicated driving and failure to wear seat belts as the main causes of road deaths but laws on paper do not save lives unless people believe they will be enforced. This brings me to the central failing that we must address, namely, the collapse in Garda roads policing numbers. At their peak, there were over 1,000 gardaí dedicated to roads policing. Today, that figure has fallen by roughly 40%. This reduction has not happened because our roads have become safer or quieter. In fact, rural roads remain the most dangerous places to travel in this State.”
“Behind every statistic is a human being - a neighbour, a friend, a son or a daughter who never made it home. In a rural area, the impact of a single fatality can ripple through an entire community. Rural roads are different. They are narrower, less forgiving and often poorly lit. They carry a mix of fast-moving traffic, agricultural vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians and now e-scooters yet rural roads are too often policed as if they were urban streets or, what is worse, they are not policed at all. The data is stark. According to the RSA, between 85% and 88% of road fatalities occur on rural roads. Even more striking is the fact that approximately 73% of serious injuries also occur on rural roads. These are not marginal differences. They tell us clearly where the greatest risk lies. Many people in rural Ireland will tell you the same thing.”
“I welcome this evening's discussion on road safety. It is a very important issue. It is not just an abstract policy. It is something that touches every family, every parish and every community in this country. Nowhere is that truer than in rural Ireland. For decades, we have made real progress. Since the first road safety strategy was published, the number of fatalities on our roads has fallen steadily, reaching its lowest point in 2021. That progress did not happen by accident. It happened because of sustained investment, better infrastructure, safer vehicles, education and, crucially, visible enforcement. However, in recent years, that progress has begun to reverse. Three of the last four years have seen an increase in road deaths and serious injuries.”
“I welcome the provision for faster licensing, which is very slow in this country, but we also need timelines put in place. Without timeframes and quicker licensing, everything seems to drag on for so long. The right change we want does not seem to come into play quickly. We are talking about it from generation to generation but nothing happens.”
“Environmental law must protect people and ecosystems and not simply penalise those with the least capacity to defend themselves. The Bill will shape environmental governance for years to come. It has to be straightforward. We need to support climate action, renewable energy and sustainable agriculture. We do not need to centralise power away from communities, weaken regulatory independence, use emergency language to bypass democratic participation or treat rural areas as a convenient location for infrastructure that others do not want. If Government wants buy-in for climate action, it must legislate for transparency, independence and genuine community consent. Without that, there will be no just transition, only deeper division.”
“Policy designed for corporations can unintentionally exclude family farms and rural SMEs. If green criteria become overly complex, expensive or administratively burdensome, smaller producers will be locked out while large operators will dominate, undermining rural communities rather than strengthening them. Climate action must be accessible and not exclusionary. Strengthening enforcement powers is not in itself objectionable, but Sinn Féin has repeatedly raised concerns that environmental enforcement must be proportionate and even-handed. Too often, small operators face swift action, while action against large polluters is delayed through legal processes and communities are left waiting for meaningful protection.”